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Craft-beer brewers increasingly are starting to do something more associated with much bigger
competitors who produce labels such as Budweiser and Miller.

They are putting their beer in cans.

The Elevator Brewing Co. began offering its Bleeding Buckeye Red Ale in cans only a month ago,
and other local artisan brewers say they either have plans to join the can club or are considering
it. They follow some of the biggest names in craft brewing — including Sam Adams, New Belgium and
Oskar Blues — in getting heavy with the metal.

The move is a marked change from past practices in the growing craft beer sector.

For years, whether they were pale ales or dark porters, craft beers could be counted on to come
in kegs or bottles — never cans.

“There was a stigma in the past that you can’t have good beer in a can,” said Jason Fabian,
general manager of Barley’s Brewing Co.

Since quality had been the main selling point of craft beer, anything associated with cheap,
low-quality brew was a no-no.

Then Oskar Blues of Lyons, Colo., took the plunge and began offering its Dale’s Pale Ale in cans
in 2002. Oskar Blues began distributing the canned beer in central Ohio a year ago.

“People just laughed at the idea of putting craft beer in a can,” said Dick Stevens, owner of
Elevator Brewing. “But (Oskar Blues) broke the ice and it’s been very successful. He proved them
wrong.”

One of the raps against beer in cans was a metallic taste.

The taste was actually related to how the beer was consumed, said Geoff Towne, founder of Zauber
Brewing Co.

“Drinking it out of a can is just as limiting as drinking out of a bottle,” Towne said. “In both
cases, you’re better off pouring it into a glass.”

For the craft brewers themselves, the process of bottling was also a tradition — “tried and
true,” Towne said. “I know how bottling works. I may not know how to repair the equipment, but I
know it.”

Small craft brewers also knew a lot of middle-size manufacturers who provided varying quantities
of the glass bottles; and a variable amount of bottles is a good thing to have when planning a
small run of a seasonal beer, a craft beer specialty.

That flexibility is in marked contrast with the canning sector, in which there are only three
major manufacturers — Rexam Plc., Ball Corp. and Crown Holdings — “and they will only sell you an
entire semi-truck full of cans,” said Travis Spencer, co-owner of Seventh Son Brewing Co. “That’s
like 22 pallets of cans.”

Such large orders are not only costly but require plenty of warehouse space, two things in short
supply for small craft brewers.

“It’s not a big deal to print up 50,000 labels and use them on bottles,” said Dan Cochran, owner
of Four String Brewing Co. “But if you talk about ordering 50,000 cans of beer, you’re talking
about 50,000 printed cans, and you are storing them. And that’s just one beer. So you have to have
a tremendous amount of space to store cans.”

Add to that the expense for equipment to actually can the beer, and the costs could overwhelm a
small operation.

“We probably would have canned years ago,” Elevator’s Stevens said, “but we never had $100,000
to invest in canning equipment.”

Buckeye Canning can store large orders of cans in its facility in Amherst, Ohio, and can haul
its mobile canning equipment in a 16-foot truck anywhere in the region.

“We bring it into the brewery and hook it up to the bright tanks and start canning,” said Dan
Blatt, a partner at Buckeye Canning. “We can do anywhere from 36 to 39 cans a minute.”

Using the company’s service was a no-brainer, Stevens said. “We didn’t want to be the second one
in town to can.”

Alan Szuter, co-owner of Wolf’s Ridge Brewing, came to Elevator Brewing to watch the canning of
Bleeding Buckeye Red Ale. “The advantage to watching is if there are any misfires you get to drink
it,” Szuter said.

Stevens said many people say the beer tastes better out of the can than the bottle.

“I do know the beer is more stable in a can than a bottle because no light gets to it at all,”
he said. “And we thought the portability was great because you could take it to a game or something
like that.”

The mobile canning operation is something that “a lot of small guys are seeing ... as a viable
option to get beer to market,” sad Eric Bean, brewmaster at Columbus Brewing Co.

“They don’t have full-time bottling in place. What Buckeye offers is a huge alternative for
people to get it out — and he’s storing stuff for them,” Bean said.

On the selling end, “craft brewers are going aggressively to cans partially because they look on
shelf like something different,” Towne said. That might not be the case in five or 10 years, he
said, “but right now, it’s a way to differentiate yourself from the market.”

So far, Elevator has been selling 16-ounce cans of the ale at its brewery tap room on N. 4th
Street and early sales are good, Stevens said.

“I think the trend is only going to continue,” Stevens said. “It’s like craft beer. We had to
tell people why it’s better, why it costs more. We did a good job telling that story. Canning will
go through the same thing. People will talk about it, try it, experience it.”